001: Is The Story You’re Telling Yourself About Writing Hurting Your Process?

What is the story of your writing right now? Not the story you are writing, but the story you’re telling yourself about who you are and how you work as a writer. 

We all have a sense of who we are as writers, which shapes the projects we take and the way we approach our work. This story makes up part of our self-image, to borrow a phrase from psychology, and it’s more complicated than it seems.

Actually, it’s multiple stories. Self-image is often a complicated, layered thing that involves not just our belief in who we are, but sub-beliefs around whether other people see us this way, how accurate those perceptions are, and which data from other people we take onboard and use to adjust our self‌-image or validate its accuracy.

I’m not a psychologist, though. I’m a storyteller and an editor, and at the end of the day I work with stories, just like all of you.

I’ve just been privileged enough to spend my career listening to other writers’ stories about who they are as a writer, and I’ve noticed some trends.

And here’s the thing: for people who tell stories for a living, writers often tell themselves pretty nasty stories about who they are and what it means to do what they do. 

SETTING UP AN UNHAPPY ENDING

Over the years, I’ve helped a bunch of writers unpack the story of their writing. I spend inordinate amounts of time unpacking my own, too, paying attention to the narratives I’m building up that impede the production of work I’m proud of.

Thing is, there’s so many negative self-beliefs writers bring to the table. Stories rife with phrases like “it’s not worth it” or “I’m not good enough”, or a mistaken belief that we should work harder.

Stories in which writing and art is a waste of time, or that we’re “selling out” and making inferior work because artistic integrity seems incompatible with our existence in late stage capitalism.

Stories in which we do not have time to do this thing we love (or, even, that we have to love writing above all else in order to do it, as if people haven’t found their way into jobs they’re good at but don’t love since the invention of work).

It’s not hard to see where these negative self-beliefs come from. For many writers, the story of our writing isn’t particularly different from the story the culture around us tells about writers, and those stories are fucking horrible. 

The dominant narrative of western culture says it’s wrong to create art for money, but values art based on the money earned or how many people are willing to pay for it.

The same culture values the product of artistic toil, but regards the creation of art as a frivolous thing, often indebted to an inherent genius or muse rather than the product of years of work and carefully developed skill. 

In so many ways, these narratives fuck with your ability to get things done and build a career as a writer. Taking control of the narrative you’re telling yourself is a really powerful tool for pushing your writing forward and unpacking some of the negative stories.

So let’s talk about some techniques for doing just that.

DRAFT YOUR WRITING STORY

You know that old piece of writing advice that says “I can edit a terrible draft, but I cannot edit nothing?” 

The same applies to your writing story. So many of the narratives that guide our writing practice are inherently subconscious and unexamined, but pulling them into the light and examining gives us ways of challenging and changing those narratives. 

Long term, I’m a big advocate of starting a writing journal, even if it’s an intermittent practice you only turn to when things are going wrong. 

In the short-term, I recommend grabbing a pen and a notebook and doing a very simple exercise. 

Write a question at the top of the page: How is my writing going right now?

Now, answer it in as much detail as possible. Every time you feel you’ve run out of words, pick a detail and ask a why question.

For example:

In my ideal writing narrative, I produce and finish new stories and novels, keep to my schedule, and start the day with writing. I don’t fret about not hitting my deadlines, and the stories I release receive adequate promotion that brings in readers (and dollars) that justifies the effort.

The fact that my current writing practice is so far from meeting this benchmark is a source of frustration to me. Rather than a list of fixable problems—I can market stories better, and I have literal decades to earn money from them—I’m focusing on parts that make my current efforts feel helpless and worthless.

I can’t imagine why it’s harder than usual to get stuff done! 

Fortunately, now that I’ve got these concerns in black and white, I can start rewriting the narrative rather than buying into it without question.

REDRAFT YOUR WRITING STORY

Getting down the first draft of your writing story is great, but half the reason to write a first draft is giving yourself something to edit and rewrite. Stories are not set in stone, and writers excel at reshaping and improving them after the first draft is done. 

Looking at my current writing story with an editorial eye, rather than my “first draft” brain, I can identify parts of the narrative that could use more clarity or fleshing out:

• How much promotion is “enough” for new releases? 
• What are my expectations about the number of readers, or the amount of money a project needs to earn in the first three months? 
• Given those expectations, am I working on the right projects? Are there better choices for the current publishing landscape?
• What does good promotion look like? Are we talking about what I’m doing, or the results of my efforts? What’s one change I can implement that will improve things?
• What should my writing schedule be? Is what I’ve always done still feasible, or do I need to adjust things because of changed circumstances?

The answers here represent the ‘victory conditions’ for my writing. Hitting those benchmarks means that my writing is successful, while failing to hit them means the narrative adjusts to “everything is awful”. 

Yet I’d left those benchmarks vague and fluid! Surely having hard numbers would be useful, if only so I can compare them to the realities of my life right now and ensure they’re still feasible. 

If you’re not sure what those hard numbers are, go back to your notebook and start this process again. Ask the big question–what does a “successful” release look like–and ask yourself follow-up “why” questions as your answers run out of steam.

Writers are often self-effacing here. When asked a question like “how many readers would you like to have?”, we’re naturally inclined to fit into cultural narratives instead of personal ones.

“I write for myself. Any readers I get are a bonus,” is a common answer. As is the swing-for-the-fences, impossible dream framing: “I want to be a best-seller and never have to work again.”

I promise you; these answers are bullshit. A defence mechanism in a culture that loves to shame writers for wanting too much, or for earning too little. They’re either a denial of your creative ambition, or pin your success on events so far outside of your control that it inevitably looks like luck if it happens.

Be honest with yourself. Truth is, the moment you think about making your writing public, you have some expectations. A tipping point where the response to a project goes from “oh, that’s disappointing,” to “oh, fuck yes! This is great.”

Writers often avoid identifying a target because they feel like it’s too small (culturally, we equate artistic success with widespread attention, and fear what it means if we don’t get it) or too big (culturally, we discourage artists from creating with commercial success in mind).

But here’s the thing: without hard numbers and a metric where you can see how far you are from your goal, it’s really hard to figure out how to adjust and reshape your process in order to meet those goals.

Put the specific number down. You don’t need to tell anybody else, and you can burn the page afterward if it makes you feel better.

But, just this once, give yourself a target.

IS THIS YOUR STORY, OR DID YOU INHERIT IT?

Here’s the thing about writing: we’re surrounded by other people’s opinions about what a writer’s story should be. 

These range from cultural narratives about what success and art loos like, through to conventional wisdom offered in countless writing books, through to the swarms of authors on social media curating their story for public consumption.

Even this essay is offering a vision of what your writing should be like. I believe my intentions are honorable and aimed at helping people, but it’s not a gospel and no advice works for everyone.

Sometimes we inherit goals and stories from people that aren’t a good fit for us. For example, let’s take an old staple on the writing advice front: you must write every day.

There are practical aspects to this–finishing and publishing new work is at the heart of many writer’s business models–but it’s also tangled up with cultural stories about writing talent being a gift and an all-consuming passion.

Thing is, not everyone’s wired this way. Writing coach Becca Syme once noted that only about 30% of her clients write this way, and that largely matches my own experiences when talking to other writers about process.

It also assumes your circumstances suit establishing a daily writing process, which often reflects a historical bias towards writing advice being offered by white, male, neurotypical, well-off writers who operate from a place of cultural privilege.

The first thing I often remind new mentees is this: writing and publishing isn’t fair. We all start with different resources and skill sets, and your support mechanisms and personal circumstances are going to impact what works for you. 

Do you need to write every day to be a writer? Not at all. What this advice is really trying to convey is:

• You probably need to write a lot to be a writer
• You can’t wait until you’re “in the zone.”
• Building up a practice makes things easier.
• Get into the habit of finishing things. 

Truth is, if you can do all that without writing every day, you’re doing it right. 

Similarly, if you can write stories off the top of your head, rather than planning and revising, and those stories are finding a readership you’re happy with? Guess what? You’re doing it right. 

The same is true of your ambitions. If your goal is to have your story read by 10 people, or 200 people, or 2,000 people, then that’s your goal. It doesn’t have to mesh with conventional wisdom and narratives about what writing should be. 

Too often, the story of our writing gets bound up in the question of what we should do as a writer we’ve inherited from other people.

The real trick is inverting that. This is what I do as a writer. 

ONE LAST QUESTION TO ASK YOURSELF

Sometimes, the story of your writing right now is at odds with where you’d like to be. Maybe shit hits the fan in your life, and there are events making it harder to get stuff done. 

Maybe it’s a more long-term problem, and you’re writing outside the white, straight, neurotypical male demographic that conventional writing wisdom often serves best. Maybe you’re facing structural issues to finding your readership, or your mental health is rocky.

Maybe you work long, physically demanding shifts that don’t allow for a daily writing routine. Or you need to write work that sells, because your family needs the income, when you yearn to be doing a very different kind of writing.

Maybe you’re responsible for keeping small humans or sick relatives going, and writing can’t be in your top five priorities.

No writer is immune to bad breaks, whether short term or long term. Sooner or later, there’s going to be a discrepancy between the story you’re telling yourself about your writing now and the story you want to be living.

If you’re unhappy with your writing story and nowhere near your goals, the first question to ask is what can I do as a writer right now? 

I’ve been there several times. Because of mental health problems or serious family illnesses. Through terrible day jobs or freelance gigs that devoured writing time like a motherfucker. Periods where my sleep issues led to weeks running on 2 hours of good sleep a night.

Days when I’m fighting with my partner, or where subjecting them to the ebbs and flows of my irregular writing income strikes me as a disservice to the person I love most in the world.

What can I do as a writer right now that gets me one step closer to the story I want?

The answers have frequently felt ludicrous. I can’t write fiction today because my anxiety means I just keep deleting things, but I can work on some pro-wrestling fanfic. It’s not real work, but it scratches the writing itch and keeps me off facebook.

I don’t have time to write because my job is killing me, and the only space where I might do something is on the eight-minute train ride to work. I can write something then.

It’s not much, but focusing on what you can do rather than what you should do allows you to become an active author of your writing story again.

Two or three days of writing wrestling fanfic often gets me back to the keyboard after a long stint of not writing anything. For years I loathed the habit and tried to break away from my fanfic project. These days, I’ve adjusted how I work to make it easier to switch over to “real” projects as I get into the groove.

Writing on index cards during my eight-minute commute turned into drafting a short story per week for a year, and largely saved my sanity doing a job I loathed when I felt trapped there forever. That led to finding another, better job.

In both cases, what I could do felt exceedingly useless. Eight minutes a day was nothing, barely worth the effort. Wrestling fanfic is a frivolous waste of time, especially when I had real deadlines looming.

Neither of these things fit with the story I told myself about what genuine writers do, and I hated myself for committing to both.

But our writing stories are mutable. They evolve and change with our circumstances and where we put our focus. Changing seemingly insignificant parts of my personal writing story created a small win. A promise my story could change. This led to larger wins, and those larger wins led to a finished project.

When you know the story you’re telling yourself about your writing–when you make it visible and conscious–you can edit. Some days you do big edits.

Some days you adjust the full stops and correct the typos.

Both are valuable.

So, what is the story of your writing right now?

And how might it be changed for the better?